Sharjah University has launched its blockchain pilot in the presence of Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed bin Sultan Al Qasimi, Deputy Ruler of Sharjah and President of the University of Sharjah.

‏The President of the University was briefed about the advantages of using Blockchain technology, which includes several aspects, including information security and confidentiality, and ensuring the credibility of information and documents, in addition to accelerating procedures.

As per the news, the work teams at the university worked effortlessly to unify and simplify procedures and to coordinate with all parties and partners to gain access to academic, scientific, and administrative services that serve the University of Sharjah community, which includes students, graduates, and the teaching and administrative staff.

In September 2022 UAE The University of Sharjah launched a research project aimed to develop a blockchain metaverse system to preserve the UAE culture and heritage. Working with BSV Blockchain Association, the University of Sharjah planned to retain ownership of UAE culture in the form of digital assets, and then develop an NFT and physical marketplace where users can exchange physical originals as well as NFTs all in a metaverse environment.

University of Sharjah has been working closely with BSV Blockchain on several projects. During the BSV Blockchain convention in UAE, BSV stated that they were working with several entities in the UAE including the Ministry of Energy, University of Sharjah, and UAE Department of Community, Dubai Police and othe

The BSV Blockchain association MENA chapter is working on several blockchain education and implementation projects to drive innovation in the UAE. To launch these initiatives BSV Blockchain will be hosting a VIP reception event in Ras Al Khaimah on October 8th 2022 at the InterContinental Ras Al Khaimah Resort and Spa.

Members of the UAE royal family, C-level executives and select members of the media will be in attendance.

Muhammad Salman Anjum, BSV MENA Hub Lead and Chief Mate of InvoiceMate stated, “This event will include the rolling out of training programmes in the Ras Al Khaimah to orient government decision makers and educate local developers and entrepreneurs on the capabilities of the BSV blockchain, an initiative that has already received great interest in the UAE.”

At the event notable speakers and global industry experts will share their uses cases built on BSV Blockchain. They include names such as Marcin Zarakowski – Chief of Staff at BSV Blockchain Association, Bryan Daugherty – Co-founder of blockchain distribution network SmartLedger, Mohammed Ibrahim Jega – Co-founder of Domineum and Geoffrey Weli-Wosu – Co-founder of Domineum, Stephan Nilsson – Founder of UNISOT, and Rohan Sharan – Founder of TimeChain Labs.

BSV Blockchain Association MENA chapter will also be exhibiting at the Future Blockchain Summit in Dubai being held alongside Gitex 2022.

The summit will allow industry experts to leverage countless networking opportunities, an expert conference programme and transformational workshops to explore distinct themes including: Blockchain for Enterprise, The Future of Digital Assets, Into the Metaverse

BSV Blockchain Association will have a physical booth on the show floor where attendees can learn about the original Bitcoin, and its benefits to start-ups and enterprises, as well as speak to BSV Blockchain companies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

UAE University of Sharjah has launched a research project aimed to develop a blockchain metaverse system to preserve the UAE culture and heritage. Working with BSV Blockchain Association, the University of Sharjah plans to retain ownership of UAE culture in the form of digital assets, and then develop an NFT and physical marketplace where users can exchange physical originals as well as NFTs all in a metaverse environment.

Prof. Maamar Bettayeb, Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies at The University of Sharjah noted that this was a very pragmatic use case utilizing technologies such as Blockchain, metaverse and NFTs. He states, “The University is serving the community and UAE’s national economy by implementing the vision of the Emirate of Sharjah as well as the UAE in documenting and preserving our history and heritage in both tangible and intangible formats.”

 Mr. Jimmy Nguyen, Bitcoin Association for BSV Founding President, added “We are very excited and pleased with the partnership with a premier institution in the UAE such as the University of Sharjah to develop an innovative solution that utilizes the latest technologies to preserve the nation’s values and history in UAE and the region. Launching a new start-up will help in creating many jobs for the new technology graduates and create new economy for trading antiques, historic and modern artworks in a digital format and in virtual marketplace as NFTs”.

Dr. Mohamed Al Hemairy, the leading researcher at the University of Sharjah explained, “UAE has a very wealthy culture and human heritage, characterised by numerous physical inheritances. Yet new generations and expatriates don’t know much about it, that is why we researched how we could deploy Blockchain to preserve the intellectual property and ownership of the Emirati’s Families inherited treasures and to design a virtual art gallery for the Arabic and Islamic culture, heritage, antiques, historic and modern artworks in a state-of-the-art digital format. These would be digitized in the form that would retain its intellectual property through Non-Fungible Tokens [NFT].”

The heritage and culture of the UAE will be in a virtual art gallery in the Metaverse built on BSV Blockchain.  

Mr. Muhammad Anjum, the Head of the BSV Hub for MESA, commented “Developing relationships and supporting the academic institutions is a key goal of our regional BSV Hub and an impactful way that the blockchain technology can grow in the Middle East. The University of Sharjah has brought a very strong use case to utilize the powerful features of the BSV blockchain. The Dubai Metaverse Strategy is an innovative initiative and a key step towards making UAE the first country in the world in the field of adoption and use of the metaverse. We are confident that we will see numerous engagements between BSV Ecosystem, and the University of Sharjah soon.”

BSV Global Blockchain Convention which commenced today in Dubai UAE is aiming to bring Blockchain back to Satoshi’s true vision and make it useful efficient and good.

Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President of BSV Blockchain, told attendees in his opening speech, “In the world today we are seeing too many coins, more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarket. We are seeing algorithmic stablecoins crash like in the case of Luna from Terra, with many of these coins being connected to crime. This is not the world I entered into when I started in Blockchain. Today we are here to start a conversation around building a world of Blockchain that is better. Build a world where Satoshi’s vision for BSV original protocol, one of P2P electronic payment transactions, and a data blockchain infrastructure useful for everyone. We are here to make the blockchain useful again.”

He goes on to state that the Satoshi vision was one of efficiency, honesty, a world of good. Bitcoin was created to address problems and issue a powerful data code and develop the internet protocol where it natively would send payments between devices without an intermediary.

Satoshi didn’t call this a blockchain, he called it a distributed time stamp server publishing transactions time stamped in a distributed manner.

Nguyen notes that BSV has demolished prior assumptions and hit 20 million transactions in April 2022, with blocks of 4GB of data. BSV is also the only blockchain that has the capacity to store NFTs on chain and yet he states this remains unmentioned unrecognized by others.

Nguyen believes that Blockchain and crypto should become more than speculative investing. He adds the world of scaling is currently not happening on Bitcoin because it is not being used for daily payments as this would create network congestion given that Bitcoin platform can only carry out 3-7 transactions per second, which is nowhere near the capacity of Visa or MasterCard that can carry out 50,000 transactions per second.

He explains, “At BSV Blockchain we have demonstrated 100,000 transactions per second, we have scaled and our network capacity is 4 GB per block which is 4000 times more than the capacity of the Bitcoin network. In April we demonstrated 2.4 million individual Bitcoin transactions in a single Block and this was Satoshi’s original design for Bitcoin. This is why Satoshi develop OP_PUSHDATA4, allowing users to send gigabytes of data in a transaction working to push to 4.3 GB of data in a single Bitcoin transaction.”

Scaling the blockchain is necessary to make it useful and inexpensive. The BTC network according to Nguyen is congested and transaction costs are high and unreliable, anywhere between 70 cents to 30 USD. Ethereum is not that better with average costs ranging from 3 USD to 70 USD and currently standing at 24 USD. This means minting an NFT on Ethereum costs 80 USD. On BSV it costs 1/100th to 1/20th of a cent, almost free. The goal is to get that number down to 1/1,000th of a cent  This is the way Satoshi had designed it adds Nguyen.

He explains, “Satoshi wanted people to be able to send small casual transactions over the internet, and that is why we are working with IPV6 internet protocol. The combination will create something formidable.”

In the MENA region BSV has already started its journey. Muhammad Salman Anjum Head of BSV Hub for MENA & South Asia stated, “We have launched our BSV MENA hub out of Dubai UAE and are developing partnerships with academia, governmental entities, the private sector, developers as well as regulators to push forward the adoption of Blockchain and BSV.”

BSV is working with several entities in the UAE including the Ministry of Energy, University of Sharjah, and UAE Department of Community, Dubai Police and others to build the research and development as well as knowledge base.

BSV MENA will also be promoting the launch of Women ambassadors in the upcoming months to encourage more women to enter the blockchain ecosystem.

While Ahmed Yousif, Lead of Government Initiative Middle East BSV Blockchain discussed the work BSV is doing with governments in MENA and how this relates to Smart Cities.

As he stated, “The MENA governments have a huge interest in use cases where blockchain can solve problems and the BSV task force is working with governments in KSA on Blockchain use cases for smart cities and Saudi green initiative. Bahrain government is also working on use cases in government on the infrastructure side.”

He gives an example of a use case in KSA where a Saudi diplomatic gated community, will be utilizing NFTs ( Non Fungible Tokens) in Riyadh KSA to encourage its residents to participate in green initiatives as part of the community.

He notes that the BSV journey in the region is just starting but BSV is here to disrupt the way we share data.